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Wednesday, February 24, 2016

IS SUNDAY TIMES JOURNALISM AIMING FOR JUNK STATUS

Dear Bongani Sigoko, Editor of the Sunday Times,

I know you have only been in the job
of heading South Africa’s
best selling national Sunday paper for a few editions but is there any chance
of you arresting the journalistic rot that has set in on your paper.

The Sunday Times is giving a new
impetus to that old cliché “You can’t believe everything you read in the
papers.”

How else can you explain the “Matter
of fact” apologies that are becoming such a regular feature on Page 2 with
other more serious ones getting slightly more exposure elsewhere.

The question readers will increasingly
be asking is: Apart fromthese apologies is the rest of it a “matter
of fact”?

What’s the thinking behind these half
hearted, grudgingly given confessions that never appear with anything like the
same prominence as the original story?

I accept that the Press Ombudsman,
Johan Retief has ordered your paper to print some of them. But when it comes to
the voluntary ones are they there to appease the complainants with the aim of
preventing them taking the matter any further or are they there to show your
paper has done the right thing by admitting it was wrong?

One thing is certain however and that is they all advertise
your paper’s declining journalistic standards.

For a newspaper that expects others to
be open it keeps very quiet about the members of your editorial team who have
been responsible for these clangers.

You happily protect your own from the
glare of publicity while you have no qualms about taking other people to task
in print for their shortcomings.

You even choose a Mampara to have a go
at the person you judge to have done the stupidest thing of the week.

Last
Sunday it was the turn of Dan Retief, whose glittering career as a sports
writer, TV presenter and author over a period of 40 years can’t have been
bettered by many. He is the only journalist to have been the Sports Writer of
the Year on three occasions and in the early nineties he was a Senior
Correspondent for your paper.

So presumably to emphasise the Sunday
Times’ impartiality whoever writes these things couldn’t resist putting the
boot in when Retief was forced to apologise for a controversial Twitter comment
that got him into trouble.

“It is not often that one who has
graced the pages of this august newspaper with his pen in the past ends up
being the Mampara,” your attack on him began.

How
august, prestigious, esteemed or illustrious can a paper be when its poor
reporting is producing an increasing amount of questionable stories?

You castigated him for “earning this
dubious honour” while there must be other journalists who would qualify for
Mamparadom, if only they were not protected by still being on your staff.

Then too your Retief dig showed up
another of your paper’s journalistic deficiencies. The writer evidently assumed
that all the Sunday Time’s 3-million or so readers would know what Retief’s
“remarks” were, so there was no need to tell them. It was left to those who
didn’t know to use their imagination.

What school of journalism teaches
this?

An Afrikaner himself Retief tweeted:
“SA carried to victory bytwo White
Afrikaners … politicians and media commentators take note …for what it is
worth.”This was after our national cricket team's win against England.

In a country where Blacks outnumber Whites by nearly
10 to 1 this caused the inevitable outcry which Retief had no way of
justifying. But if your paper is going to chastise him the way it has done it
should also have the guts to tell its readers who your current journalists are
who can’t bring their fairy tales down to earth.

As you no doubt know he apologised soon afterwards but
it was too late to prevent City Press, that other Sunday paper that is aimed
mainly at Black readers, from deciding not to take his articles in future. He
had evidently been freelancing for that publication.

Just in case you
don’t know exactly what I am referring to here is your paper’s most recent
“sorry” story.

20.
December 2015: This Apology to the Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan was
not one of your paper’s voluntary ones. You were ordered to carry it by the
Press Ombudsman so I can’t understand why your paper waited for his ruling
before conceding that “We accept we were
in breach of the Press Code for failing to seek Gordhan’s comment ahead of
publication.” That’s one of the basics of journalism that every cub
reporter gets taught - to always get both sides of the story. So wouldn’t you
have expected this to have been uppermost in the reporter’s mind, particularly
when he was writing an expose` involving somebody as important at the Minister
of Finance?

31.
January 2016: Here was another embarrassing climb down your paper was
forced to make by the Press Ombudsman. The headline Apology to Lakela Kauda cried out that the Sunday Times was in the
mire once again.

14. February 2016: This Matter of Fact was a double bill.
First of all your paper apologised for attributing something to the wrong
Government Minister in a story appropriately entitled: “Five years of denial,
cover-ups and bluster.” The next part emphasised once again that your entire staff
are very slow learners. The second part was yet another admission that the
writer had failed to get both sides of the story. Of course this is not only a reflection of the
reporter’s apparent ignorance but also of the sub-editor who dealt with it and
an Editor who allows this kind of thing to persist. You do have
sub-editors in this high tech age or am I still in my typewriter and shorthand
days at your paper?

21.
February 2016: I assume that even in these ostensibly serious Matter of
Facts your paper likes to have a bit of fun now and again. I don’t know if
you’ve seen how laughable this one is. Readers were told that Gabs Mtshala did
not say what your paper claimed he had said about Ngqula. It added, “We also
neglected to give Ngqula an opportunity to respond to the allegation.” What! Ideally
one of your reporters should have asked Ngqula to respond to a non-existent
allegation. This also shows that not getting both sides of the story is endemic
on your paper. I managed to track down the “Dicksy says he’s no criminal” piece
which has the bylines of Bongani Magasela and David Isaacson on the top. This
raises the question: Who was to blame for this shoddy bit of journalism. Even
with two scribes tackling this rather ordinary tale your paper couldn’t get it
right. This report, which ran right across the top of a page, illustrated perfectly
how your apologies are given nothing like the prominence of the original story.

In 2008 your paper’s news room was in
such disarray that an independent panel was appointed to establish what was
wrong and how it could be fixed. Perhaps it’s time you had another one of these
before things get any worse.

Regards,

Jon,
the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman, who gives the other side of the story.

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About Me

I was born in South Africa just before the Boer War whenever that was?
Started life with a golden spoon in my mouth which made eating rather difficult as a result I was under nourished as a child.
Went to a posh school where I only got moved up a class when my old man donated another sight screen for the cricket pitch.
Career prospects were dismal and I was once turned down for a job in the London sewers. "Too highly qualified;"that’s what they said.
I became a journalist when the Police Force wouldn’t have me.
Like most journos I know nothing about everything but I still write about it.
I decided to have my own blog so I wouldn't have to drink with the editor for hours on end to get my stuff published when according to my independent assessment it’s always of great news value.
My religious beliefs are: You only die once so remember, "You can’t be serious and Have Fun."
NEWS FLASH: I've just been appointed the Poor Man's Press Ombudsman by Presidential Decree (Not to be confused with the PRESS COUNCIL OF SOUTH AFRICA'S, SA Press Ombudsman)